Three plain reasons for electoral defeat

When you lose an election that you were sure of winning - surety to the point of already having started distributing sweets - then there are only a few rational explanations to explain the inexplicable. One, the counting of votes was wrong. The counters must have been swayed by hook or by crook and 'miscounted' to such a degree that the result was, well, no longer worth counting. You can really never count on counters any more. Two, the EVMs were manipulated. Those machines must have been tweaked so that every vote for X went to Y, while every vote for Y also went to Y. Being hacked by a rogue group of tech-savvy bounders hired by your opponents is, in fact, not just a possibility, but an obvious avenue of action in these 'ghost in the machine' times of ChatpatGPT. EVMs are always dodgy - when they throw up a result that doesn't match what you had in mind.

But the most likely explanation for this sudden turn of terrible fortune is cause No. 3: the voters - they were wrong. Voters, bless their hearts, know the best. But that's only when you win. When you don't, they are likely to be swayed by a last-minute promise of free ice cream or, worse, sweet talk. Or, they must be stupid enough to be swayed and waylaid by rumours that cast aspersions on your impeccable reputation. Whatever the reason, it's clear that the voters made a big mistake.